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THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
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MONDAY, JAN. 18, 2016 | VOLUME 131 ISSUE 1
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Meet the "mother" of Kansas women's athletics
CHRISTIAN HARDY
@ByHardy
Senior Tiana Dockery rose up above the net, found a lane, and slammed the ball to the hardwood court; the thunderous collision between ball and floor shook through Horeisi Family Athletic Center. Point, Kansas.
On the edge of the bench closest to the net, coach Ray Bechard eagerly jumped out of his seat and shouted a few words of encouragement.
Another coach sat 10 rows behind him, between sections A and B. She gazed at the court with her eyes wide, startled by what Dockery had just done. This coach, though, was retired, more relaxed, and rather removed — yet equally important
— to what became a 19-game win streak for Kansas volleyball on that Wednesday night.
It's Marlene Mawson.
"They're not good," Mawson said, looking onto the court. "They're fantastic."
For most of the match, Mawson, who is considered the mother of women's athletics at Kansas, sat with her fingers locked in her lap, with a quiet comment or criticism of the game here or there every so often. She twiddles her thumbs — maybe a sign of the investment she has in the team.
She breaks her folded hands to join in the applause with the 1,520 people in attendance. But, even then, her hands seem to end up back in her lap, her thumbs fidgeting.
Mawson knows what it's like to be in the position Bechard is today; she's been there. In fact, she might be the reason it exists.
"She got women's athletics off the ground here!" Bechard said. "She just gave females a chance to compete."
In 1968, Mawson was tasked with establishing an intercollegiate women's sports program at the University of Kansas with a budget of only $2,000 per year to cover for six sports. That $2,000 covered equipment, uniforms and travel, and comes to about $13,675, accounting for inflation. So, on top of her physical education faculty position, Mawson was suddenly coaching four women's sports — volleyball among them.
"We did not have floods of money, so a lot of the people who were coaching would coach two or three or four sports," said Kerry Kapfer, who played for Mawson in the early 1970s and is in the Kansas Volleyball Association Hall of Fame for her efforts at Shawnee Heights over 26 years. "Without her, I really don't know what would have happened at KU."
Mawson coached the volleyball team for five years and also contributed to building women's basketball, softball and field hockey programs. Then, even though on a much smaller budget and with fewer resources,
the programs were much different.
When Kapfer played for Mawson, the team traveled in station wagons and played in generic uniforms. Now, it has hotels, identifiable Adidas-sponsored uniforms, and charter busses or — on occasion — planes. Mawson was major player in that transition, especially before she left the University in 1990.
"For all the things that we get from the standpoint of Adidas, and travel, and opportunities, we should look back at those that didn't have anything and still competed because they loved the sport," Bechard said.
"It's exciting to just to see the changes in sports for women over the last 40 years," Kapfer said. "It's a different world, and it's better. It's really the way it should be."
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PAIGE STINGLEY/KANSAN Marlene Mawson watches Kansas volleyball on Oct. 21.
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director of the new Ocala Paslau Prevention and Education Center.
The center was established in October to centralize the University's sexual assault prevention methods. Previously, education and prevention efforts were coming from several different offices, including Public Safety, Student Affairs, Watkins Health Center and the Office of Institutional Opportunity and Access.
["Before the center], there [were] no centralized folks, so sometimes our efforts weren't as effective as they could be if
Vice Provost of Student Affairs Jane Tuttle said the new center will initiate its own programs as well as help steer other offices to ensure all components are on the same page.
Tuttle said she believes Brockman is the best person for the director position because of her experience.
Brockman, who will begin Jan. 20, has a history of tackling sexual assault issues. After getting a bachelor's degree in criminology and sociology with a focus in victimology from Drury University, Brockman went on to get her master's in organizational leadership from Gonzaga University
Step from Gonzaga University. She has since gone on to work in several sexual assault prevention coalitions in the Midwest.
tion work."
Brockman served as a sexual assault prevention educator at the University of Arkansas, and most recently, executive
"I think KU is positioning itself well to really have an intentional approach and effort to curb and eliminate sexual violence on the campus," Brockman said.
take on sexual assault.
Brockman said she thinks University students are poised for helping prevent assault. "You're high-activist, high-energy, and you've got students who already ready to go," Brockman said.
The first item on her to-do list is to build trust and cooperation within the community by understanding the culture and the components at work, Brockman said.
"I think the first step is to really understand KU's culture and make myself available and
ming, Brockman said there's a few ideas she's got in mind. The center's main focus will be prevention work, offender accountability and behavior recidivism work, that is, working to curb patterns of repeating sexual violence.
Brockman also said she looks forward to working with the University to make sure its policies are "reflective of the work and the philosophical standing of the center's charter" as well as developing victim resources.
The University currently offers several options for students who have experienced sexual violence, including off-campus advocates, medical and psychological counselors and resources for filing a com-
"We need to be able to promise them we have their back," Brockman said.
comes to sexual assault.
Brockman said the center will hire two more employees sometime in the spring. She said the hires will be two educators, one focused on male engagement and bystander intervention, and the other on dating and healthy relationships.
Although Brockman said she feels nervous about being the first director of the newly-established center, she's said she's excited to get started.
"There a lot of unknown, but this is really the opportunity to create something amazing from scratch," Brockman said.
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